1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a hopper type supply device for supplying filter rods as rod members in the manufacturing process of filter cigarettes, for example.
2. Description of the Related Art
With a filter cigarette manufacturing apparatus which is a so-called filter attachment, a filter plug which is obtained by cutting a filter rod is first disposed between two cigarettes. The two cigarettes and the filter plug are combined together by use of a sheet of paper to make two connected filter cigarettes, and then, the two connected filter cigarettes are cut apart at the center of the filter plug to make two separated filter cigarettes.
Therefore, a hopper type supply device for supplying filter rods is attached to the filter attachment. The supply device includes a hopper for storing a large number of filter rods and a receiving drum disposed directly under the discharging port of the hopper, and the discharging port is shut or closed by part of the peripheral surface, that is, the circular arc wall of the receiving drum.
A large number of receiving grooves are formed in the peripheral surface of the receiving drum and the receiving grooves are arranged at a regular interval in the circumferential direction of the receiving drum.
The filter rod has a length corresponding to the length of a plurality of filter plugs and the filter rods in the hopper are arranged with the axes thereof set in the direction along the receiving grooves.
Therefore, the filter rods in the hopper are set into the respective receiving grooves of the circular arc wall via the discharging port.
If, in this state, the receiving drum is rotated in one direction, the filter rods in the respective receiving grooves of the receiving drum are sequentially taken out from the hopper.
The thus taken-out filter rod is cut into two or three equal portions on the receiving drum to form separate filter plugs and the filter plugs are supplied towards the cigarette feeding path.
In order to enhance the productivity of filter cigarettes, it is required to enhance the whole operation speed of the filter attachment. Therefore, in the above-described hopper type supply device, it is necessary to enhance the peripheral speed of the receiving drum in order to increase the number of filter rods which can be taken out for each unit of time.
However, if the peripheral speed of the receiving drum, that is, the moving speed of the receiving groove is made high, each of the receiving grooves which successively pass in the hopper according to the rotation of the receiving drum cannot stably receive the filter rod, and as a result, it becomes impossible to successively take out the filter rods from the hopper. This may be considered to occur by the following two causes. The first cause is that the flow of the filter rods in the hopper cannot follow the moving speed of the receiving groove. The second cause is that a bridge is constructed by a plurality of filter rods near the receiving drum and the bridge disturbs the flow of the filter rods moving towards the receiving drum.
As will be clearly understood from the above explanation, since two or three filter plugs are obtained from the filter rod received into one of the receiving grooves of the receiving drum, each filter rod is used for forming four or six filter cigarettes. Therefore, if the receiving groove of the receiving drum fails to receive the filter rod in the hopper, the number of filter cigarettes which become defective is increased, thus significantly lowering the productivity of the filter cigarettes.